


All Lies and Jests

by stoprobbers



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-06-14
Packaged: 2018-02-04 15:33:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1784188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stoprobbers/pseuds/stoprobbers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Standing at the edge of the rooftop of the Powell Estate and staring down the portion of London laid before him he looks like Batman, if the caped crusader wore a dapper, slim-cut brown pinstriped suit and long wool coat instead of black plastic armor. Or black leather armor, for that matter. He's so different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Lies and Jests

**Author's Note:**

> Inpired by "The Boxer:"
> 
> In the clearing stands a boxer   
> And a fighter by his trade   
> And he carries the reminders   
> Of every glove that layed him down   
> Or cut him till he cried out   
> In his anger and his shame   
> "I am leaving, I am leaving"   
> But the fighter still remains

She's confident he doesn't know she's watching him. Standing at the edge of the rooftop of the Powell Estate and staring down the portion of London laid before him he looks like Batman, if the caped crusader wore a dapper, slim-cut brown pinstriped suit and long wool coat instead of black plastic armor. Or black leather armor, for that matter. He's so different, this new Doctor, strange and familiar at the same time. She's trying to get used to him, to stop comparing and contrasting and start just  _seeing_  him, but it's difficult.

When she leans in close she still expects to smell leather and wool, but the leather scent is gone and she doesn't know what to do. She's only human, after all.

If pressed she'd never admit she's hiding but she is, crouched behind the HVAC enclosure, where they once both sat — what feels like forever ago, though it was probably only a matter of months (or a missed year and months, it depends on whose timeline she's counting doesn't it?) —as a spaceship filled with fake pig-headed "aliens" passed over their heads to crash into the Thames. That was the day he told her he was 903 years old and she didn't believe him, but looking at him now she wonders how she could have doubted him. Certainly that body, that face, hardened by war and pain and loss, is easier to imagine approaching a millennium of life than the one a dozen feet away from her now.

That night, after they'd survived a missile attack and gone to see the ion storm, after she'd left her mother behind again without a second thought for this man, this incredible, extraordinary,  _alien_  man, they'd sat at the table in the TARDIS kitchen with mugs of tea and Jaffa cakes she hated and he wolfed down, and she'd decided to press further. She'd gotten such tantalizing glimpses of him before, little crumbs like Hansel and Gretel left behind them but leading further into the woods, not to home. She'd wanted to know where the trail led. She forgot about the witch's house.

"Are you really 903?" is where she'd chosen to start. He'd looked at her, something sly and teasing behind ice blue.

"Are you telling me I look older?"

"Yeah, you're ancient, you are," she'd laughed and he'd chuckled but she didn't know him well enough then, couldn't tell the difference between that sound and the genuine article.

"I could be," he'd said, "or I could be older. I could be younger. You think a year is 365 days, but that's only on your planet. A year on Saturn is 10,832 of your days. A year on Pluto, is 90,580 Earth days. Poor little thing, it didn't even make it 'round your sun once between the time you humans discovered it and then decided it wasn't a planet anymore. Not even close, really."

"What are you talking about? Pluto's a planet."

"'Fraid not. One of the things you missed in your, er, year abroad."

He'd had the manners, at least, to look embarrassed when she'd glared. It had been an attempt, she knew now, to distract her but she'd been curious and she hadn't realized where the lines were drawn yet.

"Well, how many of my days around your planet's sun?"

That frigid blue, it hadn't grown colder but the ice had thickened and she hadn't known, didn't see.

"Who's to say my planet has one sun? Your planet does, but not every solar system has a single star at its center. There are binary solar systems, tri-star systems, and clusters. Some planets never see a night."

"But what about  _your_  planet? I'm not asking about  _all_  planets, I'm asking about  _your_  planet."

He'd drained his tea and pushed back from the table in a one smooth motion.

"All right," he'd announced, putting back on the airs of authority he used to keep her —and, eventually, Jack —in line. "Time for all good humans to go to bed."

"Oh come on, I'm not a child—"

"Compared to me, you're a babe in arms. C'mon, off you go, get those eight hours so you don't trip and fall into a dungeon tomorrow."

"Doctor!" She'd risen because he'd risen and in standing had given herself up to his whim, but she hadn't quite been ready to let it go. She'd only asked a  _question_.

"Rose?"

He'd crossed his arms, leather shining like tarnished armor across his chest, face serious, almost stern, and she'd deflated.

"Fine. See you in the morning, Doctor."

"Goodnight, Rose."

She'd been almost to the hall when his voice had floated after her, soft and pained, like the words were costing him.

"Two. My planet had two suns."

The next day they'd landed in an underground museum bunker in Utah with one lone living alien and she'd understood. Because he hadn't lost his planet, he'd destroyed it. It hadn't been a disaster, or fate, or time, it had been a war, and he had been a general,  _the_ general, the survivor, the winner.

She hadn't asked after that. Anything he wanted to tell her about his home planet, he told her. She didn't pry. Deep in that bunker, gun in shaking hands and eyes wide with fear and fury and so very, very blue, she thinks that may have been the moment she fell in love with him, with the raw open wound on his soul. It was certainly the moment she'd realized she would do anything to help that wound heal.

Now the wound has scar tissue and he has really, really great hair and she doesn't know how to see  _him_  anymore.

She shivers, pulling her coat tighter around her, and maybe she makes a noise, a rustle, or maybe he's just known she's been there all along, but he chooses that moment to speak.

"D'you want to come over here and join me?" he calls, not turning around, not all the way, but turning his head enough for her to see his profile and the fond crinkle at the corner of his eyes. "Because you're making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end staring at me like that."

There's no point in pretending not to hear him, not when she knows he can see her, so she stands from her crouch, knees creaking, and slowly walks over to his side. She stands close enough for their fingertips to brush, but he doesn't take her hand, not like she did last night when they stared at shooting stars that weren't shooting stars as the ground was blanked in ash-not-snow. Instead, he slides his hands into his pockets and rocks back slightly on his heels.

"Looking for me?" He is trying hard to be nonchalant, but there's a strain in his voice, the barest waver. She wishes his hand was available to her, regrets not taking it in the first place, but there's nothing to be done about that now.

"Sort of. I mean," she wants to bash her head against a wall he tenses up next to her, "I wasn't  _not_  looking for you. It was more of a trying to get away from Mum situation."

"Ah," he smiles and in profile, at least, it looks genuine, "well  _that_ I certainly understand."

"Were you trying not to be found?" She hadn't considered that.

"Not at all. Just having a look. New eyes, I told you last night; all those things and I haven't seen them yet, not with these eyes.

"You must be ready to leave."

"Leave?"

"Yeah, off to the stars, who new universe, that one, no that one? Remember? Happened last night, or is your memory going in your old age?"

"Old?! Rose Tyler, are you calling me old?!!" his voice skitters so high it almost cracks and he wheels around to face her so quickly her knees get whipped by his coat. "Look at this body, Rose Tyler, does it look  _old_  to you?!"

Oh she's been looking, she's looked much closer than he realizes (he hadn't asked about Howard's jimjams, not yet, and she wonders if he really thought about it and, if he had, what he thought); she's quite familiar with how slim his hips are and how long his legs are and how improbably broad his shoulders are. She knows about the patch of hair across his chest and the wiry strength in his forearms. The slight weakness in the dorsal tubercle, well, he brought that one up.

"No, you look young and handsome, very dashing, really," she gives him a big grin, the tip of her tongue poking through her teeth and he nods decisively, as if the universe has just ruled on a case she wasn't aware anyone was arguing.

"Thank you. Sharp eye, Rose Tyler, you pass."

"You keep saying my name," she says softly, looking down at her hands. "On the Sycorax ship, at dinner, this morning. How come you keep sayin' my full name like that?"

"Feels different in this mouth. Rose Tyler, Rose Tyler. Nice, really. New teeth. It really is weird, you know, suddenly having new teeth. Changes everything. Tongue, lips… this mouth, it's so much more nimble, quicker. Should be able to talk myself out of anything now."

He winks at her, clicking his new tongue loudly in a way that startles her, far too jovial to be real.

"Or  _into_  anything," she counters with a laugh and he laughs as well, nudging her with his elbow. She nudges back, the flirtatious gesture finally bringing his gaze down to her and though his eyes are chocolate brown, not ice blue, there's no warmth there. She is back in the kitchen, naïve and in awe, but this time she can see the gates and the heavy chains that keep them closed. Guarded. Just a flash and then he's looking back out over London with a placid expression.

And suddenly she sees  _him_.

The look on his face on the street as those lasers had appeared out of nowhere, the way his eyes glittered as he'd stared down Harriet Jones, circled her, whispered in her aide's ear. The set of his shoulders now, watching over a world too scared to trust him, to let him steer the ship. How little he _wants_  to steer the ship, but is willing to make the sacrifice because he is the only one left to do it. The look of longing now as sunset turns the sky blazing orange, and the set of his mouth that says he'll never speak the wanting aloud.

Brown wool blurs into black leather blurs into brown wool.

She tugs on the arm closest to her until she frees his hand from his pocket and wraps it tightly in both of hers. He doesn't say anything, just tugs her in a little closer to his side and squeezes her fingers. They are quiet for a long time as the orange begins to darken to red and, slowly, violet.

"She's not quite ready to fly yet, but when she is we should have a picnic," he says softly when sunset gives way to twilight. "A proper picnic in a park."

"We could have one of those right here," she points at the small park and its playset between the Estate buildings. "That's ordinary."

"Not an ordinary picnic, never that."

"Under an orange sky?" she asks. She's not quite sure why, just a half-remembered dream and the sunset. "Somewhere very far away?"

He is quiet for a long time, and very still. She's about to give up on an answer when he speaks, just barely a rumble in his chest.

"Further than we've ever gone," he says.


End file.
